Mike is Hamming it Up with Amateur Radio, Hands on Review – HGG411

Jim opens the show with a quick hands-on review of his new Govee Bluetooth Thermometer and Hygrometer that he picked up to try to get better control over the wooden humidor he has for his cigars. Mike spent the rest of the time going over a basic Ham radio set up. I think you will enjoy the show.

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #411 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Full show notes and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg411

Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Antenna, Repeaters, Ham Radio, Radio, Humidity, Frequency, Transmit, International Space Station, ISS, Talk, Amateur Radio, Range, Bands

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Conversation

Couple new blog posts on the site:

https://theaverageguy.tv/2019/07/28/how-to-manage-kids-screen-time/

https://theaverageguy.tv/2019/07/20/the-five-best-home-automation-gadgets-under-100/

If you would like to contribute, email me jim@theAverageGuy.tv

News

Hangouts OnAir are officially disabled as of today

Reviews

Govee Bluetooth Thermometer&Hygrometer, Mini Accurate Humidity and Temperature Sensor with Data Storage Export for iOS/Android – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07R586J37

Product Updates

Amateur Radio (Ham Radio)

A range of frequencies that licensed amateur radio people can use.

Why is this still a thing? Ham radio does not require a network and can cover long distances. During a disaster, it is one of the only modes of communication.

What do you need to get started

• DC power supply
• Transceiver
• Antenna

Mike’s Gear

Handheld Units – Baofeng UV-5R – Dual Band 2 meter and 70 centimeter – 5 watt $30 on Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/BaoFeng-1800mAh-Battery-TIDRADIO-Antenna/dp/B0772FYKK8

ExpertPower XP-669C Antenna – $12.25 on Amazon

N9TAX Slim Jim Antenna for home use $30 on N9TAX website. 

Car Rig – QYT KT-8900D Dual Band 25 watt dual band radio – $79 on Amazon

Bingfu Vehicle NMO lip mount – $30 on Amazon

Tram 1180 dual band antenna – $32 on Amazon

How do I talk to people? Simplex or Repeater use

Three Classes of Licences: Technician, General, and Extra

http://w0egr.com/

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 411 recorded on August 1, 2019.

Here on Home Gadget Geeks, we cover all the favorite tech gadgets that find there way into your home, news reviews, product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host, Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV studios here in a beautiful Bellevue Nebraska. Mike, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not going to ask too many questions. But we have strung together a couple really nice. I mean, I think last week, we were talking about nice days, right? I mean, there’s been a week and some change,

Mike Wieger  [0:46] 
we get some change. I think it’s going to last into the weekend. Just that perfect. You know, 70s 80s no humidity. It’s been gorgeous. We’ve been outside as much as we can.

Jim Collison  [0:56] 
Ya know, last Friday, I had a tree guy come take down some trees for us. And you know, part of the deal was that he was a buddy of mine. part of the deal is I would clean up the you know, the limbs and stuff and I bought a grinder you know, I bought $100 $200 grinder you know, or chipper? Yeah. Alright. So I was thinking that this won’t be, this won’t be anything. I got a third done in like four hours. I’m like, oh, trees are always way more clean up than you think. Right? Yeah, helpful to have a chipper. And I’ve got some landscape that I’m working on as well. And so I have plenty of projects and kind of looking forward to the fall. So that I can get out there a little longer than the really hot days. My neighbor came out, I was working digging and he was like, Are you trying to kill yourself? Is that? Is that what you’re trying to do so? Well, anyways, the weather’s been beautiful. Thanks for joining us tonight. Of course, you can catch world class show notes. What you want to catch tonight, or we’re going to talk ham radio. Tonight, I’ve got a little review of a go V, humidity and temperature sensor, we’re going to talk about those all the links to that will be out there. But also so the transcriptions are now out there. So if you want to go out there and just search on that, you can do that as well. They’re all posted in show notes, go to the average guy.tv forward slash HGG 411. You can also catch us live on the mobile app every single week. If that’s what you want to do. Home Gadget Geeks, com just download an Android iPhone, even if you don’t normally do it, have it on your phone. So you’re traveling on a Thursday night or just need to stream it for some reason. It’s available. It’s free. Download it, we thank our Patreon subscribers for helping us pay for that each and every year. And so we’ve done that for a while we thank you guys for doing that as well. And then don’t forget join us in discord, the average guy.tv slash discord and if you still want to join the Facebook group and like we had somebody do that this week. facebook.com I know. Let’s do the average guy.tv slash Facebook will get you know,

Unknown Speaker  [2:45] 
Discord.

Jim Collison  [2:46] 
Well, the discord but the Facebook? Oh yeah, you can still join us in Facebook, if that’s what you want to do. Yeah. So either way, that will get you in there. Um, couple things before we get started. One is Mike, I’ve, you know, I get contacted about twice a week from Hey, we want to do guest posts, and we’ll pay you and i don’t i really don’t want any of that because it’s just garbage. In most cases, it’s not unique. And it’s not even really good. And I’m not I’m just not interested in that. But I’ve had a couple reach out to me that I’ve been working with a little bit just to get some interesting different content. I’m not writing it. I’m not changing it. I’m letting them write it. But we’ve had a couple of guest post couple guest bloggers, in the last week or two put two articles out there at the average guy TV one how to manage kids screen time, which is super cool. So if you’re dead kids, you have young kids. I know Mike, you do you probably don’t have to deal you guys deal with screen time

Mike Wieger  [3:40] 
with your kids all the time, actually. Yeah. I mean, it’s shocking how young they are when they start nowadays. And mainly it’s the TV there, you know, we it’s easy to not give them an iPad at this age two and a half and one and a half. But it’s usually wanting to watch their movies and stuff like that. So it’s the big screen time that we worry about now, but it’s Yep, already. It’s already started. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [4:02] 
yeah, well, some tips. We got an archive, there’s some tips on how to manage screen time. So you want to take a go and take a peek at that. And then I have five, the five best, bestest, maybe two strong term, home gadget home gadgets under 100 bucks, and they didn’t include everything. And it’s just five love your feedback on that. We’re going to try and do more of that. And we I used to do a lot more guest posts from listeners, and we just got away from it. I want to kind of get back to it. So if you’re interested in writing something, and it doesn’t have to be long or even complicated. Get some things down contact me, Jim at the average guy.tv. Let’s put him in there. These posts not they’re not sponsored. They’re not they don’t have crazy links in them. I kind of wiped out all the links. There’s some links in the bio is if you want to follow the writers of those. That’s kind of what I told them. I do. They didn’t pay me. I’m not paying them. Just looking for some good content. So if you haven’t been out to this site in a while, take a look at those average guy.tv. And they’re they’re ready now as of right now, the right up front and take a look at those as well. reminder that Hangouts On Air what we used to use to podcast here dead as of today. I went out tried to set one up disabled. So the

Mike Wieger  [5:14] 
other than I thought I thought they’d be give it till the end of the year. It’s already dead, huh?

Jim Collison  [5:17] 
Yeah, August 1, they announced like two weeks ago, August 1. And I thought oh, they’ll probably miss it by a day or two. Nope. It’s done. So Good thing we moved over here to to stream yard and a great way to get into YouTube to get it done. So Hangouts On Air officially that Mike I open those by the way they came out on a Tuesday? No, they came out on a Monday. We were using them Tuesday. I forget it was home server show. So I don’t know if we recorded Tuesday, Wednesday I forget that with ya know, right. Right to the very end. Yeah, using them. as well. I mentioned before we get to your ham radio segment. And Andrew was like, wait, what ham radio? Did he really say that? Yeah, I did say ham radio. We’re going to talk about that here. Mike. We kind of tease that at the end of the show last week only. By the way. Huge thanks to Edward for coming on and just kind of updating us on cryptocurrency and the blockchain and all those things from his deck. A super cool that he could do that if you haven’t done that. By the way. If you think it’s about Bitcoin, you’re wrong. Like if you just haven’t listened to it, you I don’t like Collison guy and Bitcoin blah, blah, blah. No. I mean, we talked a little bit about Bitcoin, but I wouldn’t say it’s a Bitcoin dominated show, would you like no,

Mike Wieger  [6:35] 
no, definitely not. blockchain was a big part of it. And then it really him given us His kind of philosophy on the new stuff coming out, especially Libra and things like that. And it was more like the philosophy around the ideas around what he thinks is going to do well, so I thought it was a great episode. I always love having Edward on I always learned something from him, or he sparked some other side of the conversation I hadn’t really thought of before so definitely worth worth listening.

Jim Collison  [7:00] 
Edward came out on Friday night met me in Havana and we enjoyed a scar together. It was fun to see him in person I we do a lot of this but don’t always get to meet in person. And so appreciate Edward coming on. And thanks for doing that. Mike, before we jump into the ham segment, I have been struggling with my when you can’t see it here. Let me let me switch to this for the video. So if you look up over here, right this is the humidor on top of it is an acrylic humidor. But the kids bought me this one a while back and I’ve really been struggling to keep the humidity or even a know the human that I call it human stat but it’s really called the high drama that’s on the front is not reliable. And I kind of screwed it up when I got the thing knew I kind of glued it in I tried to see listening is pretty bad. So I I’ve been I’ve been trying to figure out like how do I want to do the humidity in there. And so this early this week, I think Monday or Tuesday night i thought you know, I should just get a Bluetooth micrometer, temperature, and micrometer. Now you can use these a lot of folks use them. Here’s what’s go V is the name of a GOV they have a whole ecosystem. pretty small. By the way, here’s that coin right that that Ron made for us. And here’s the grant I ground or so. Oh, yeah. Yeah, pretty small. Right? When it when you do it that way. Turn it up on its side.

Mike Wieger  [8:20] 
Okay, not bad. It actually looks pretty much like the exact size of an EOB thermostat. Remote Sensor,

Jim Collison  [8:26] 
almost. But it’s the same box just to be.

Mike Wieger  [8:29] 
It’s actually the same thing. It does humidity and yeah,

Jim Collison  [8:31] 
yeah, yeah. So you can you can you open on your sensors? Can you open them up with a little there’s a little here, there’s a little tab there that allow you get to the battery, can you

Mike Wieger  [8:41] 
the battery is just on the back. And it’s a little tiny circular thing you untwist? Yeah, this is probably the exact same but probably pretty darn close. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [8:49] 
this one is the old school where you just take a flathead screwdriver, pop it up, and then pull the board up batteries underneath the board, put the battery and get it done. Temperature human entity go VS pretty good app. And Kofi has quite a few sensors. I think on the website what I saw, you know, so I, of course I’m talking of it in terms of, of, you know, cigars, and some of those kinds of things. Some of you guys aren’t in the app, but they have some you know, they have some, when you think about keeping humidity, you might want to know if you have a wet if you have a wet basement that is giving you trouble. You know, if you want to measure oftentimes musical instruments, keeping them in closets and such, you might want to know what’s going on there. Sometimes food storage, right? Where you’re storing things, you’re kind of looking for that right humidity. And these are good for pretty wide temperature setting, as well. And and they’re they’re adjustable as far as you can drop them in and the app, you can go into the app and then say, Hey, your temperature or the humidity is not just right. Let me let me adjust it, you can do it right on the app to get it done. So the the goal with this and then the the app is pretty cool. You probably can’t see it really well here. Let’s see if I can. And that well, let’s go and just warn me, I took it out, I set some parameters here like, hey, if it gets below 60% humidity, or if the temperature goes above 80 degrees, Semyon alert, you just saw that alert pop, yeah, yeah, right. And then it’s got a graph and it keeps some data. So you can export the data. If you want to drop it into a spreadsheet. You can kick that data out and email it to yourself or whatever you want. You want to do that’s on there.

Mike Wieger  [10:34] 
And you send them Bluetooth straight from the device to your phone.

Jim Collison  [10:38] 
Yeah, yeah. So you literally

Mike Wieger  [10:40] 
when you’re out of range, is it not is not tracking that historical data?

Jim Collison  [10:44] 
Correct? Oh, that’s a great question. I think it is,

Mike Wieger  [10:48] 
and uploads it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s a feature that that’s not standard across the board for those type of sensors. So if it is story, not even for a little bit of time. That’s that it’s awful.

Jim Collison  [11:00] 
Yeah, yeah, you can set it of course, you can say delete all the data on the device. If you want to set it back to zero. You know, temperature went down when I had it in the in the box, it was 75. Upstairs, 70 down here. Little bit warmer in front of the lights. So the temperatures got up humidity about 50% in the house, it’s I try to keep it at 69 70% humidity inside the humidor. Just put it in tonight, it capped out at 70% 69 70% in that in the regular human or which is go. So yeah, after the show, it’s going in the box. And I can finally kind of start measuring,

Mike Wieger  [11:37] 
okay, accurately

Jim Collison  [11:39] 
keep this box, right, three, three, both of the packs in there that regulate the humidity inside the box. Those Bova packs are designed not just to bring it up in humidity, but to keep it so it doesn’t go above 70 doesn’t go below 70 tries to keep it right in this case, minor 69. But keep it right at that humidity level. So give me a good chance to kind of test it to just kind of see like, okay, how’s the box doing? And in so I’m kind of excited to get that thrown in there and set up our report back on in a couple weeks to see how it’s going. So far. So good. I did a little testing tonight app looks good. It’s got min max averages. You like I said you can adjust it to, to kind of tune it. If it’s not getting exactly what you want. I just need to get close. Like I just want to make sure that box is not super dry.

Mike Wieger  [12:29] 
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, would you probably be okay, even if it was within 5% you’d be okay.

Jim Collison  [12:36] 
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. Who knows? What’s the most accurate? Like I you know, right? Yeah, kinda like, I think maybe on humidity, it’s one or two, maybe three degrees, I’d be okay with you on either side of 70. temperature wise, I think that’s pretty easy. You know, and it’s 70 down here. And that’s the perfect temperature to keep cigars at in whatever. And that doesn’t have to be scars. It can be whatever ever is whatever has humid humidity, emitted the sensitivity. And it was like I said guitars, musical instruments, some of those kinds of things.

Mike Wieger  [13:09] 
So I learned from Ron filament, right for your 3d printers.

Jim Collison  [13:14] 
Yeah, no keeping keeping track of that. I think the cool thing with this is you can throw it in a say you’re traveling, and you need to make sure that that box stays at the right temperature, or humidity, throw it in the box. It’ll warn you on your phone if like, hey, things are getting too hot in here. You know?

Mike Wieger  [13:30] 
Yeah, throw that they’ve done the box in the trunk. And you can still monitor it from the front seat. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [13:34] 
yeah. All right, Bluetooth. So not the longest range, right on the planet, but pretty good. 24 bucks. I think it’s what I paid for this little thing. You probably find it as cheap as 20. But do they have Wi Fi versions? Oh, that’s a good question. I didn’t do a lot. I wanted Bluetooth. Okay. So I could see where the Wi Fi would be helpful. But it was

Mike Wieger  [13:55] 
checking in at work all the time. New crypto mining, right?

Jim Collison  [13:59] 
Yeah. Yeah. Know, for a while I would, I probably would for sure you’re probably right for a while. And then you know, it’s kind of one of those things that once you get your humidity, right. It’s boring.

You know, your account. works now.

Bummer. It kind of works. It kind of works. So I’ll report back on it. But cool. If you’ve if you’re a listener, and you’ve used go VGOV, you’ve used OV products products before I love to hear from you send me an email, Jim, at the average guy.tv seems to get pretty good ratings. And they have a lot of different devices, water temperature sensors, light sensors, some of those kinds of things. seem like a pretty good product. So we’re going to give it will give it a try and see how it goes. Mike, you shocked me a couple weeks ago when you said, Hey, I’m getting I’m getting into ham radio. Like what? And we talked a little bit about it on the show last week towards the end of it, but I kind of wanted to give you a big chunk of the show tonight to be like, you know what? Okay, first of all, how did you get? How in the world? Let me ask you this. Have you sold the equipment already? Is it? No, we’re all good. We’re still building at this stage. So we’re still getting in. I think this is going to be a little bit more of a long term hobby. What What got you into this thing?

Mike Wieger  [15:17] 
So you know for you guys who don’t know I’m kind of an outdoorsman to you know, tech and outdoor. So I’m a big gun guy, love shooting. Even on YouTube watch watching a lot of like gun tactics, home defense, those sort of videos. And you know, a big part of that there’s kind of some crossover in that rabbit hole of YouTube and that sector of YouTube, you’ve got gun guys, but they also sometimes turned into sometimes like the peppers right? Like you’re prepping for kinda like the you have your go bag, like what do you do if you need to like, bug out right, your bug out bag, your bug out gear? What do you do, and a big part of a proper and even not even a proper, but even just like being prepared emergency scenarios. A big part of that is amateur radio. And so one of the guys I was watching, he actually just did a fun video where he was learning about it for the first time. So he went to a guy who was kind of a pro amateur radio guy had been doing it for years and runs it as a business. And he was Okay, tell me about amateur radio. What is I didn’t think people even use this stuff like a walkie talkie, like the thing I get from Cabela’s is that the same thing. And that video kind of like, Man, that’s kind of interesting, because they got just technical enough. They they fired on two of my, to my nerves there, right? They got the tech angle from like the frequencies and bandwidth. And then they got the outdoorsman kind of tactical angle. And I was hooked. It was instantly like okay, this is like the best of both worlds for something that would get my interest. So started that in between there was about a three week span from the time that I saw it on YouTube, to this past Tuesday when I just took my test to be licensed. So it’s one of those we’ve joked about when I get into something I go like full in and I go full in quick. So I decided Oh, this is super cool. Let me study for the test. Go take it. I did pass my test on Tuesday. So I’ll Yeah, thank you. And so the license though it has not hit the database yet actually keep refreshing, I pray that can be there for like a week. So I can’t transmit as of yet. So this whole conversation, keep in mind, I’m brand new to this, I’ll give you as much information as I have, and where I plan to go with it. But I am brand new to the whole hobby. And I actually have not been able to transmit. So all the reviews I’m going to give you on some of the gear that I have is all based on received so far. And I the fun part about this, though, is it’s a hobby that I’ll slowly add to over time. And over time, I can give you guys updates on, you know, some new gear I’m testing or how the transmitter works for all this stuff. But getting into it was a whirlwind. And what I did was I started watching these videos. And you know me, I had to get a radio like second day. So I ended up ordering it. And it’s actually been nice though, because with the license, you can’t transmit but you can receive all you want. So running the radios and listening, you can sit and listen. So it gave me a good three weeks to really get to know the radio watch. I mean, I only want to admit how many hours of YouTube and reading articles I have done. Because it is one of those hobbies that for this audience, the people that listen to this podcast, if you guys have not gotten into amateur radio, this is only a warning. This is almost like crypto, right because it is a rabbit hole that you can go down. But it’s different than crypto in the fact that you know amateur radio is actually really expensive. I’m going to show you guys tonight how to get into it affordably. But that only scratches the surface. And to really get into some of the really cool parts of amateur radio, you have to shell out a lot of money. So it’s one of those that you’re not going to be able to get in and get out real quick because you’re not you’re never going to experience it. And usually these guys who have done it, most of the guys you’re hearing on the radio are a lot older, right? Because they’ve it takes a lifetime to really means a whole lifetime hobby. You’re constantly tweaking to learning, learning. So a very fun, fun hobby that we’ve we’ve delved into here,

Jim Collison  [19:06] 
Mike, I can grab my cell phone and make any call anywhere like you’re in Nebraska if I’m out hunting, yeah, which I never would be. But let’s just say I was for a second. I can use my phone, I can kind of make calls. What is the draw? to this? I mean ranges aren’t that spectacular? It’s not like I’m, I can call Wyoming from here, right? Or can I?

Mike Wieger  [19:29] 
Oh, you really can. So here’s kind of the pitch for ham radio. So ham radio, they say you know, when everything else doesn’t work ham does, that’s kind of like they’re saying. So your cell phones, your computer, they are relying on the grid being up, think about if your cell phone tower around you goes down, your phone is useless. I mean, yes, it has Wi Fi. But if the grid is down your connectivity, that phone cannot make any calls to anyone else if you don’t have internet connection, or cell service. So down, whereas ham radio, you you know, it’s kinda like that peer to peer, right? So as long as me and my buddy are up if we have our handhelds out, and usually the repeaters, which we’ll get into in a second, it’s kind of kind of like creating a network for for shorter range radios, those are usually on running on backup power, because ham is what we are using an emergency scenarios, hams also what they use for storm trackers. So a lot of times when you’re out, you know, you’re not getting service when you’re doing Storm Chasing and things like that. So there’s sky warn, which is a network of ham radio operators. And in each local area, they have what’s called a net. And during storms, they’ll all get on and all the people out in the field are reporting back to a central guy on ham radio, because they’re just going to work. There’s no network you’re relying on. And then you did hint at it, which is the distance. Depending on which side of ham radio you get into. And we’ll kind of get into the different bands, you can do it in a little bit. You can talk all the way around the world. I mean, you could be talking to India, you can be talking to Germany, from your house, with an attic up on your with an antenna up on your roof. So the possibility the range is absolutely insane on who you can talk to. And that’s where it really gets fun. So the other pitch for it is it’s kind of a challenge these guys see it as Okay, so there’s these things called contest and they’ll do them on the weekends where it’s you have to contest to see Hey, can I hit all 50 states can I hit what countries can I hit and you’re doing it rapid speed you’re tuning the bands go into different bands, seeing if you can contact someone. So you’re literally just saying, Hey, this is Mike essentially the other guy saying hey, I’m Jim. Okay, I’m in Germany, I’m in Nebraska. Cool, thanks, we got it on it, we logged it right, you log that contact, and then you’ve logged it that you spoke to some guy in Germany. So there’s the whole game element. And then it’s just a ton of fun because this is one of those things where you can homebrew your own gear, you can make it at home if you want, you can buy it so it’s there’s a whole ecosystem around radio. And ever since you know kind of World War One World War Two era, these things so just become really popular with with guys at home, because it’s a way to communicate. And there’s a groups of people that form and they set a time and they set a frequency. And it’s called a net. So you know, Thursday night, eight o’clock, we could have the Home Gadget Geeks net, and everyone tuned to 147 dot eight. And do you have a local repeater. So everyone within a range of that repeater can chat on the net, and there’s kind of a format there’s got it reminds me of a like a board meeting. But ok, now we’ll take that they don’t take minutes but Okay, everyone check in. So you check in and then obviously radios being I can’t talk over someone. There’s one guy in control. He says, Okay, now let’s hear from Jim. Jim, how was your day? And Jim, you would talk about your day and then Okay, now we’re going to go to to Mike. And you can have these sort of conversations and then with other technologies like IRL p, which is an internet protocol for linking repeaters. So there are repeaters linked across the country. So there’s a few nets here that I’m connected to a local repeater here, which is essentially a big tower. And I’m talking you’re talking to people from Alaska, Hawaii, they’re all connected because they’re the backbone is through the internet. So it’s kind of become a hybrid. Now you’ve got traditional ham, which is talking mobile to mobile, you’ve got a semi network, which is repeaters meaning one big tower that instead of my radio, Jim talking to your radio, we’re both talking through a really tall tower, which just makes it more convenient, we can have longer range. And then you have even a broader network where you have a backbone between repeaters either via the internet, or via microwave radios on the top. And so so that’s kind of the pitch. It’s, it’s it works when everything else doesn’t is the fundamental pitch for it. And then beyond that, it’s just become a fun hobby for people.

Jim Collison  [23:40] 
Super cool. The So Alex says our local emergency management department actually had a local group of ham users that were used for transmitting information in case of mass disaster or weather disaster, right. And we, we just had some disasters here in Nebraska coming up this spring or this last spring. So you could definitely see the US can they’re big in the 70s. I think ham took a little bit of a law, at least in the popularity standpoint. Would you say it’s becoming popular again?

Mike Wieger  [24:07] 
Yeah, I think so. I think the what, like I mentioned the pepper scene, a little bit has brought it up. They also use it in racing. So like if you’re NASCAR, or if you’re doing any sort of like the drag racing at the track. Those guys are all using ham, four wheel clubs. So you think of a Jeep club that’s doing four wheel driving through the mountains or whatever those clubs are starting to use ham radio, traditionally, a lot of them had started using CB radio, which CB as citizens band difference being you can use a CB radio without a license, which is kind of why CB has still stuck around for some four wheel groups and things like that. But the range is extremely limited on a CB radio where you know my radio, I can talk to people a few miles away where the CB you’re getting a few blocks, maybe half a mile. So the range a little bit different. And there’s also not the repeater network and there’s just not as developed as ham. So I think people start with CB and I think now ham has become kind of the standard. When you ask people I think West Coast has adapted ham more than East Coast has if you’re looking at simply for mobile uses and things like that, on the East Coast for four wheel groups and cars and trucks, they’re still using CV quite a bit. West Coast has moved primarily to ham radio.

Jim Collison  [25:21] 
I mentioned at the end of the show, and we were talking about this last week I was a big CB guy in the early 80s had gotten really popular. We play this game, super fun game, in what do we call RQ? up I think it’s what it was called. So one person you get about 15 or 20 people together and one person would drive somewhere and you know, CB radio is one to 15 miles is kind of about what the distance on those is. So 15 would be pretty job stretching it. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [25:50] 
just to be in California, when you have mountains. That makes sense. If you’re talking to someone high up in your low Nebraska, you’re not gonna get that range on a flat, but yeah, yeah, me I’m a mile probably have too few miles.

Jim Collison  [26:00] 
So we’d queue up. And then you’d have to use the meter on your, you know, on your CB radio, to find the person. So the stronger the signal, as they’re keyed up, you know, you’d go into the one of the higher channels, you know, maybe like 30, or 40, you would so you’re not you’re not stepping on people. But then you’d have to find them using the meter. Of course, the better your meter was more accurate, you could be in finding them. And you just drive around trying to triangulate and find out where people were and then we would flip the channel down if we wanted to talk as a group. So flip the channel down, everybody would talk mostly taught each other. And then we flip the channel up and you would go find these it Mike I found it. Very, very fascinating. So I did the CB radio, you’re doing ham? What if I was? So just say for example, by the way, I’m not but just say for example, I need a ham radio, like I need a hole in my head. But that being said, What would I need? How would I get started?

Mike Wieger  [26:53] 
So to get started, you kind of need to first understand the bands and how the tech how the classes a license work. And you can can decide how you want to go with this. Real quick though I didn’t know this. Andrew actually mentioned in the chat that related to what you were just saying with CV, apparently they do something very similar with amateur radio called a fox on

Jim Collison  [27:12] 
that same thing. So you see because of that, too, okay, I’ve not heard that in 35 or 40 years.

Mike Wieger  [27:17] 
So now I’ll have to look up that and see if there’s any local Fox on to see on here. Yeah. So So real quick, let’s walk through, first of all, what, what you need to even be a ham operator. And what you need to do is you need to go take a test, and there’s three levels you can get. So you start out as a technician, then you can get the general and you can go extra. So when you first start out when you go and take that first test as a technician, you’re going to be very, you’re not very limited, you’re going to be limited to what you can use and what you can transmit on. So you gain more bands, more frequencies you can operate on as you move up. So first person starting out, you’re going to get your technician license. So that’s what I went and got on Tuesday. So you go you take the test, you study for it, take the test. It’s a lot of like electrical components, antenna safety, things like that. Not nothing too difficult. But definitely something I had to study for that nothing I would have just built a without if I went 35 question, multiple choice, no big deal. So with the technician, what you’re allowed to do is you’re allowed to operate in the UHF and VHF frequencies, ultra high band, and very sorry, ultra high frequency and very high frequency. So and actually I swapped those up VHF is actually lower than UHF VHF is the highest. And the primary primary bands, there are a two meter band and a 70 centimeter band. So you’ll see, you’ll hear people say Hey, are you a two meter guy? So like, Andrew asked earlier, Hey, are you a two meter guy? And yeah, so the two meter bands are what I love to work with. So that you’re looking at like 144 megahertz like right in that range when 44 147 148 right around there. So that’s the frequency, you’re going to use. The quick equation, just if you guys want to know if people are talking bands, like I don’t get what is a band compared to frequency takes 300 devices by the band and you’ve got the frequency. So 300 divided by two meters, get you 150 your your frequencies are red and the 150 range. So So lots of people talk about they’re talking about bands. So when you have that technician, you can operate in the two meter, or the 70 centimeter 70 centimeters at your 444 megahertz frequency range. And those sort of frequencies UHF and VHF are more of your short range frequencies. Obviously, they’re higher frequencies, right? So they’re not going to travel as far and they’re not going to go through buildings as well, they’re not going to propagate over the horizon as well. So you’re going to be a shorter range. So what that means is, obviously if you’re going to go radio to radio, we call that simplex, if you’re going to be doing simplex channels, Jim and I both have a radio, we’re standing there, we’re trying to talk to each other, you’re going to be limited range. But the great part about the two meter and 70 centimeter bands are that there is a network of I shouldn’t call it a network because they’re each individual. People have put up repeaters all over the country. I mean, I think in Nebraska alone, there’s probably hundreds of these repeaters, what a repeater is, think of it as a, a an antenna, that someone has a very good spot to put it really high up. So the higher up you get these antennas, obviously because all radios are line of sight. So it’s Hey, can I see the other radio, especially UHF and VHF their line of sight. So if someone has a spot where they can put a hand up really high, you can get a lot more range. And obviously if I can see that, then it doubles my range because I can see anyone beyond the repeaters going to be accessing as well. So you have these, this, these repeaters that you can access. So in Omaha, even there are probably 1314 repeaters around here that you can access and you plug it in to your radio and it was a with a repeater, the repeaters listening on one frequency and transmitting on a separate so your radio knows, hey, when I’m listening, listen on one frequency, but then when you press the when you press the PTT button here want to talk, it switches to a different frequency because that that repeaters listening on it, so you’re gonna, that’s how you’re gonna be operating. So with that being said, so when you’re a technician, those are the only two mode you can operate. Once you move up in your class level, you can move into what’s called hf, or high frequency, high frequency, or the radios that we were talking about earlier, where you’re going to be able to talk across the country across the world, because you’re bouncing it off the ionosphere. So UHF and VHF, those frequencies are so high that they punch through the atmosphere, it’s actually the reason you can use a VHF UHF radio to talk to satellites. So you can actually talk to the International Space Station, when it’s come right over you, you can use a standard radio like this, this one can do it, you turn it like this. So the signal goes straight up, and you can punch to the atmosphere. And you can actually talk and receive with the International Space Station with a radio like this, which is great for things like that. But it’s awful for trying to get long distance because your frequency does not bounce back to the to the to the earth. But with HF, high frequency, those are your 10 2040 meter, 60 meter, 80 meter, and there’s a bunch in there, all those bands, those are all high frequency. And those will bounce off. And you can really talk long distances with those that gets a little more complex. And so obviously you need a higher ratings, you need to go take another test to be able to to do that sort of stuff. So we want to talk about hf a lot tonight, mainly cuz I haven’t done it. And I don’t I’m not even qualified to do it. So we’ll start with what are you going to get when you first start out. So this is the stereotypical, I am brand new to ham radio, radio, you I mean, if you just Google it, this is what everyone’s getting. So because it’s cheap, it’s super cheap. So this is a bow Fang UV five are. So this is all in the show notes. But this radio is $27 on Amazon. So extremely cheap, you can get in and I’ll turn it on here real quick. Hopefully no one’s talking.

So you got two frequencies you can monitor. They’re actually both those are set right now on the same channel. Oh, there it goes their focuses. So that’s a local repeater frequency here in my area, but I could actually switch that and I can monitor two different channels at once. So this is your standard they call this an HT radios Not to be confused HFHT for handy talky. You know it’s a room that term from way back I think was the Motorola days Motorola had coined the term handy talkies, so they still call these HTC. So benefit of this, it’s cheap, get you in, I can start doing ham radio. It’s awesome. Also portable runs off a battery. And I can I can take it. The downside though, obviously, with this is you’re limited by your antenna and your power. This thing only puts out five watts of power. So when you’re talking about power, that’s really what your two things are going to look at your antenna and how many watts you kick it out, especially with UHF VHF, the more power, the better, longer need to go. So first radio is Woodring get the balancing up five or if you’re going on the cheap side, the next thing you’re probably going to want to do is update the antenna. So these antennas just grew up. So this is actually an upgraded antenna. This is an expert power antenna. And I have the model number in the show notes. So the antenna that comes stock on a little these HTS, especially the cheaper HTC, they call them rubber ducky. And you guys have probably, if you’ve ever played with one of these smaller radios, especially like the ones you get from Cabela’s, or you know, store, they’re stiff. And if you looked on the inside actually coiled up wire, and they are just terrible for range for everything. So the first thing you wanna do is upgrade that antenna. So you can actually get a little bit better range. But for $30 plus an $11 antenna you are up and running. So this thing charges, and then there’s also a programming cable show here. So this this cable plugs into the audio jack, definitely make sure you spend the 10 $15 to to programming cable, this plugs into your computer, programming it with a computer software, all your memory channels and stuff like that is a million times easier. Most hands will tell you they don’t even know how to program this manually, or they do and it just takes forever to program a memory channel. So So this gets you up and running.

Jim Collison  [34:58] 
That’s kind of the Mike I put a little link in the show notes for a $37 version or 38. That has all that so it’s got the Mike. It’s got the charging cable. It’s got the upgrade, I think it’s got an upgraded antenna, and two battery packs in an ear earpiece deal. So 38 bucks, you’re in on all that stuff.

Mike Wieger  [35:19] 
Yep, that sounds about right, because I paid I think 48 for I got actually a two pack of these radios, because I plan on using them for like hunting trips and things like that. So we could both have one. But the microphones look something like this. So it’s probably what that one looked like. This is a very simple microphone, obviously, you’ll notice there’s no buttons on it besides the push to talk. So you can’t like switch channels with this or anything like that. It’s a very basic, basic microphone. But so this is the first step. And the great part about this is that this is my obviously my mobile and I have my regular office just to the side, I wish I could turn my camera here. But I have the same radio with the antenna screwed off. And I actually have a coaxial cable that runs from this desk in the basement up to the attic. And what I have in the attic is a Slim Jim antenna is what they call it.

Jim Collison  [36:08] 
So it sure Me too, by the way all the time, just

Mike Wieger  [36:10] 
Slim Jim. Yeah, that’s my name. Slim, Jim, well put you up in the attic, we’ll see how much you resonate on the two meter crazy,

Jim Collison  [36:17] 
a couple hot days in Nebraska and I wouldn’t be slim. Right.

Mike Wieger  [36:22] 
So a Slim Jim antenna, it’s actually a fantastic design for antenna because it actually bends over on itself. So it doesn’t need to be as tall as a standard antenna. So when you guys are talking about antennas, if you think of a two meter antenna swap around the 144 frequency, it actually needs to be two meters long to be resonant is what they say on that frequency. So for it to naturally resonate on that frequency, that’s the length, you want it to be the length of a wavelength on that. So the wavelength is two meters. They have quarter meter antennas, half meter, or sorry, quarter wavelength antennas, and things like that. So you can cut it down in certain intervals. But it’s best to I’m a full wavelength antenna. So I have an antenna up in the attic co x that runs all the way down, and it plugs into the top of this radio. So this radio has now gone from being just a handheld antenna to a little bit more of a very cheap base station. Now that’s great, because my reception is amazing. I can pick up repeaters now 3040 miles away, because I have that added that antenna Matic. The problem is when I transmit like my signals not getting back to them, because this thing only kicks out five watts. So don’t tell the FCC but I try to chunk the radio real quick. So the great part about a repeater is that if you just click your radio real quick, the repeater will actually has a little bit of detail on it. So you’ll hear the repeater pick up and kick back off. So that way at least you know if you’re in range, so I just want to test a real quick Okay, MIM range of needs repeaters. The closer ones, yes, but I’m able to receive a lot better than able to transmit because this thing’s only five watts. But again, it gets you into the hobby, and it gets you going. Have I put you to sleep yet? You know

Jim Collison  [38:04] 
what you started talking? I’m like, Okay, this is gonna be a while I’m just gonna settle in.

Mike Wieger  [38:07] 
Yeah, just settle in.

Jim Collison  [38:09] 
They thought it was napping, but no, I’ve been looking at prices. I’m not gonna buy one that I’ve been I’ve been looking at prices. You mentioned satellite. Have you done any satellite? Have you? Have you done any satellite? Or if you mentioned the space station? Like, is somebody there to answer if you if you do that? Or how do they do that?

Mike Wieger  [38:25] 
That’s a great question. So the satellite stuff is something I’m just now getting into, because I’m almost ready to be able to transmit. So as soon as my license hits, I’ll be able to do more of that with those satellites. There is a fantastic app. Even if you’re not a ham radio guy. It’s called, I turn over what this app is called real quick.

Jim Collison  [38:45] 
He talking about one for the International Space Station.

Mike Wieger  [38:49] 
No. So this is go sat watch. So go sat watch, what it does, is it will show you all of the satellites all over the world. And you can drill down down into the ham radio satellites, the space station, and it will tell you and give you an alert when a satellite is directly above you. So and you can actually view it in in real time on on the app. So that gives you a much better Okay, here go it finally loaded. So as you show the world here, so those are all that is just ham radio satellites, and space stations in there somewhere. I mean, so the I turned off all the other categories. And then so it will show you that and it will also show you if I go to passes, these are all the time that one of those satellites in the past directly over my location. So kind of cool. So no, I have not done it yet with these. But that’s one thing I do definitely want to get into with them. There,

Jim Collison  [39:40] 
there is an app, there’s an ISS app will do that there. This is on my Android fire tablet. And you can kind of it’ll keep track of where the International Space Station is for you. So we’re here. So you can always kind of know kind of wearing the world’s International Space Station. So they’ve been having some camera troubles. I know it’s going Otter HD camera hasn’t been working on the SD camera has been on a good chunk of the time. But it was kind of interesting to see where the International Space Station is.

Mike Wieger  [40:09] 
Yeah, so it’s kind of fun, because you pick up telemetry data from them. They they do all like each, each satellites can do something different. So I think there are times where you can communicate back and forth, a lot of times you might just be receiving signal from them. It really depends. So that that becomes kind of a sport, because to actually be accurate enough to get that channel. A lot of people use special antennas and things like that. But if you want to go one step above what I just showed you so I don’t know, I already went I heard you had to go to phase two with this because I these were fantastic. But the way these are not great in the car, and I was I drive a lot, right, like morning commute afternoon can be where I would love to do it. And I was actually about to go on a road trip to Kansas City. And I really wanted to be able to see if I could pick up some of these repeaters along the way. Well, cars are perfect, you know, Faraday cages, right, it’s all metal, it’s gonna be terrible, especially if you have an antenna like this. So what they make, and I again, I put the I put the description of it in the show notes. But for the cars, you can get mobile units. And the moment it’s there’s kind of two benefits of them. Number one, their antenna obviously is meant to be external. And number two, they’re using much higher power than a handy talky. So I got a I pretty much went as a so this setup I’ve been showing you on both sides is as cheap as you can go, you can’t really go any cheaper except for I did splurge a little bit on the internet. So I had a nice antenna. But I went with the QRTKT at 900 D. So that radio is a 25 watt radio dual band. So you got two meter and 70 centimeter. And it’s extremely small, actually, I should have have pictures of it, you guys can go out and you can click on the link. But it’s a tiny mobile radio. So think of actually, it’s not much wider than this radio itself. So if you look at that, that’s about how wide it is. And it’s not very long. So I actually mounted it in my car. So you mount the head unit, your car. So I have it right down kind of by my by my leg attached to my center console. And then I ran you run an external antenna. So you kind of find a grommet in your firewall go through into the engine compartment. For the one I did people have Roof Mounted magnet antennas, if you don’t want to install something permanently. Yes, there’s the radio right there. So the QT 900 D, not too bad price wise 76 bucks. And like I said, I have not been able to test the transmit. But the receive has been perfect. I’m picking up repeaters between 35 and 45 miles away. And when we’ll see if 25 watts is enough to transmit to them once I get it. So the antenna runs like I said mine the way I set up as I did a live amount. So what a little mount does is actually you know what, let me just pop up real quick. While I’m talking here, my photos.

Okay, here we go.

share screen.

Jim Collison  [43:09] 
Okay, it’ll show up for me. And I can add it’s there we go.

Mike Wieger  [43:13] 
Oh, it went away.

Jim Collison  [43:16] 
open back up. Aereo.

Mike Wieger  [43:18] 
Okay, so I have not vacuum my car recently, as you can see, but so there is the little radio. And it’s mounted right to the side of the car. So not that big when you look at this. And then here’s the microphone cable coming out and I have it running up top. And then what so all the wires, so you need to run a power line and you run an antenna line, I tucked up under the center console, and then run up here under the nice under the carpet and punched out through a grommet. And then here is the lip a mountain tennis you guys want us down here, this is actually Lyft. It’s connected right to the hood, directly to the side of the hood, essentially. So what’s great about that is as you lift the hood up, it doesn’t hit the antenna, it actually takes the antenna with it. And the antenna the way it’s designed, it actually doesn’t hit the mirror even as you as you go up. So it’s attached right to the hood. And it doesn’t have to have the permit, which is the great part about the lip antenna. A lot of guys, if you’re going permanent, something like this, they’re drilling a hole in their roof of their car and putting the antenna up through but obviously it leaves a, you know, a permanent hole. So this was a great way there is one chord and you can see it kind of runs up here, I have kind of tucked it down so it stays a little tighter. But you need to leave enough slack. When you open your hood, it’s not going to yank that cable to harder or snap the cable. So you’ll have a little bit of slack. And then this antenna, you can actually see it, it’s pretty tall. Luckily, this does fit my jeep as a shorter Jeep. So this does fit into my garage and I have to take it down or anything like that. And this antenna was one of the higher rated antennas. This is a tram 1180. So you’re looking at $32 for the antenna. And I believe the mount itself, and the cable that comes with it. This is called an NMO mount. And the MO is kind of a universal, they even they have CB antennas that fit on an MMO mount. So MMO is kind of a universal adapter mount, they’re going to put so then the antenna you want to look for is like a two meter, an MMO antenna. And that connects right there. And then so there you can kind of get a good idea of how much taller so my car kind of comes up right above this choke here on the antenna. And then so you’ve got all that above. But this does fit just right under the garage door there as I pull in. But you know, not too bad. It’s not too gaudy. A little bit obviously, you can definitely tell it wasn’t factory from the car. But nothing too bad.

Jim Collison  [45:39] 
Now it’s nice, interesting.

Andrew asked dual band, two meter and 70 centimeter.

Mike Wieger  [45:46] 
Yep, so all of the radios that I’ve been telling you guys about tonight are going to be dual band. And I kind of like that it kind of gets you where you’re not having to pick one or the other. And it keeps it really simple for antenna purposes. So the slim down antenna I told you guys about a lot of people love jeyapaul antennas. So JP antennas are really cool, you can make them with copper pipe, pretty easy to make, or you can buy them online for really for pretty cheap. But the problem is they’re only for one band or the other. So if you want to run the radio like I did down the basement, you’re going to need to have two different antennas in the attic, which means two different lines of CO x. And the CO x just a heads up is not the same collapses you guys are used to for cable TV. So what’s different is the the impedance is different on those two lines. So whereas a cable TV co X has about 75 homes, dear your co x for ham radio, you want it 50 and that stuff gets kind of expensive. So you’re thinking it’s probably gonna be about $1 a foot for for that cable. So if you have a 50 foot run, expect to pay about $50 for RGA RGA AX cable, which is the type of collapse you’re going to need. So you will need you start adding all that up if you wanted if you needed to have two different antennas, you just doubled your pricing cable, which could you know, for me I needed a 50 foot run to get from my basement to my attic. And let’s add another 50 bucks if I wanted another antenna up there so the Slim Jim antenna that I pointed out to you guys from nine in nine TAX. That antenna is a dual band antenna, which is great. One antenna does both bands.

Jim Collison  [47:24] 
The chat room is thinking maybe your duplicate it is taking over again. Oh no. You gotta really you got really blurry in there. Yeah, your audio is fine. And most people listen to this on audio. So I’m okay with it. But you can you can check that out Who? So you haven’t talked with anybody? But no. Right now, so you’re still kind of in setup mode. You’re still in? And no, no DVDs. Yeah. Sarah is looking for movies, Renegade movies. Is that what you’re thinking? I’m stealing back here. Oh, the kids are watching Marvel all the Marvel movies? I don’t know. We don’t we apparently we don’t know, Dr. Strange. Or it’s going to get bought tomorrow. So let me see what happens with the Collison house when we’re podcasting. So when you’re just waiting for the license to refresh in the database, and then yeah,

Mike Wieger  [48:18] 
so that’s what happens. You go take the test, and then you as soon as your license hits the database, and you can search on FCC, then you have your callsign. So it’s very evident if you don’t if you’re not licensed because you don’t have a call sign to tell everyone.

Jim Collison  [48:30] 
You don’t have one yet.

Mike Wieger  [48:32] 
No, you don’t get it until you get your license. So and the rules with that is you need to say it at the end of every conversation. And then at least once every 10 minutes. So if you and I get on I say at the beginning, you know, this is canine TAX is that one guys callsign. And then you and I have a conversation. And as long as the conversation, you know, goes below 10 minutes, we say at the very end, or if it’s been 10 minutes, we say our calls. And again, the general rule of thumb. So you do so cool. Yeah, it has been a total blast, I tell you, it’s one of those where you start to get it because for the test, you have to get into some of the technical side of this. So that’s what’s been fun for me and Jim, I think I’ve learned about about myself is that the hobbies I like, is the things where I’m learning about a whole totally new technology. And if it ever starts to get boring, it’s because I kind of start to get to the limit of the end of the tech stuff, which for this hobby. I know nothing about radio waves, how they work, you know, what does what is resonant mean? On an antenna? I have no idea how does frequency work transistors, resistors, capacitors, all of that stuff in I mean, people start making their own radios instead of buying them. So this is just one of those really fun hobbies, I can see that last for a while. And it’d be fun to kind of get the boys into and, and already, it’s been totally fun even just to listen in to people chatting on the way to work. So your commute in your city is usually when the repeaters are hot. And so as you’re driving in, you know, on four or five of the repeaters, you’re going to find different people having different conversations. And you know, Jim and Bob are talking about what they had for breakfast, what they plan to do that day and Okay, I’m pulled into work, you know, have a great day Talk to you later. And they’ve made friendships via this, you know, radio network and, and I do get it because when I was trying to convince Hannah, this is cool. And she’s not convinced yet. She has no idea why it takes.

Jim Collison  [50:21] 
It takes her Why? Well,

Mike Wieger  [50:24] 
someone’s talk right now. So she was like, okay, but I get it. Like that’s, that’s fun for you. She goes, but my, you know, this, I can talk around the world in seconds with this does everything. Why is that? So cool. I do get that side of it. I think it’s more of the tech angle learning something new, and then also to be prepared for emergencies. And then eventually, I do want to get into hf radios, and be able to do that really long range making contact with other countries. I think that would be a lot of fun. And actually we do have so obviously Andrew in the chat tonight has been he said he’s a ham. We have another one one in our community that I just found out about last night. Our own Christian Johnson is m rating. Oh, really? Yeah, he’s into it. And he is he says he’s really excited when he has a place where he can put up an antenna and or Peter, he’s going to get more into it. So once he has the space to do something like that, okay. Because actually, I went to Maple Grove because I wanted to set up just a blog site where I could keep track of all my, you know, my the story of going through all this. And so actually to Maple Grove to set up a WordPress site. And he messaged me on just like, Hey, welcome back to the Maple Grove. And I told him I was like, no way he was I like ham radio. So we do have a few people here who are kind of into it. Do.

Jim Collison  [51:44] 
So is your site setup? Is it working?

Mike Wieger  [51:48] 
Not Not yet. Well, I mean, it’s up. But I mean, there’s only one blog post and I did I took a big risk. So there you can get vanity call signs through the FCC, and you can search through them and see which one they’re taking which one they’re not. So I took a really big risk because I made my domain off of vanity calls and IC is available. It’s been available for the last 13 years. No one’s claimed it. So hopefully when I get my calls, I can apply for that vanity callsign. But it would be w zero Eg er, so almost if you take the zero out, it’s Wieger WZGR. Calm where be so I’ll post their updates and pictures. And for those of you who who are interested in ham radio, you can go out there and and look at that. And that’s where I’ll be posting every

Jim Collison  [52:29] 
is that is that the URL?

Mike Wieger  [52:31] 
Yeah, W zero EOVR.

Jim Collison  [52:33] 
So hold on WW zero, Eg er, yep. EGR.

Calm should be somewhat up.

Yeah, right there. So right there. That’s super cool. And that domain was pretty easy to get. Oh, yeah, that was

Mike Wieger  [52:51] 
okay. I mean, that’s, that’s a weird domain, right. So people with cut who used our call centers, our main domain usually have no trouble because the format of it like that zero needs to be that there needs to be a number and it indicates where region you’re from. So if you’re in the Midwest, you’re likely a zero. And then you can usually tell where they’re from, what kind of license they have by what our callsign is.

Jim Collison  [53:11] 
By the way, Maple Grove partners plans as little as $10 a month. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [53:16] 
it was only 15 bucks. I got email included. I’m Michael Yeah, I need an email address. Yeah. $15. And he sends you I mean, he had he had the respect. He had everything set up within an hour. Like and I’m sure this guy’s busy, right. Like this is not

Jim Collison  [53:30] 
Amazon Amazon’s keeping him pretty busy.

Mike Wieger  [53:33] 
Yeah, so I mean, top quality service, he had it up and running, even messaged me on discord and the email with the instructions he sends you to set everything up is is super easy. So I was like I said, I got this all been running in an hour last night. Cool. Let me I need to get those. Let me get those. You didn’t include those show notes.

Jim Collison  [53:49] 
Did you have that that website? Oh, I did not yet. I’ll just paste it in there. I’ll get it over. Cool. Anything else?

Mike Wieger  [53:58] 
Man, it’s gonna be one of those topics that we just you know, every once in a while, I’ll give a little update maybe in the post show or the pre show about you know, new stuff, we’re doing new antennas I’m trying I think it will have a one time able to transmit, I’ll be able to give you guys a good review. And I mean, I guess the one thing I do want to mention, the things I outlined tonight, the gear is, is the bare minimum, you need a power supply, a transceiver, an antenna, and these ones that I gave you, you know, they’re not the best, right? Like, but this is there, you can’t get into ham radio any cheaper than the gear I showed you tonight. That’s kind of the method I want to follow with this is let’s let’s start with the cheap stuff and see if it even works. And then kind of work our way up from there. So don’t expect to be you know, contacting you know, foreign nations with the stuff I talked about tonight. But uh,

Jim Collison  [54:45] 
well, I think you may find we may find listeners like that. Google come out of the woodwork. I have a feeling a lot of our listeners are ham. guys and gals. Right? Well, I believe it’s think

Mike Wieger  [54:59] 
yeah, it’s so I have found other people in Omaha and I really, you’re into this and like had you know, that’s a fun hobby. And, and now it’s kind of one of those you know, once you have a red car use, everyone has a red car. Now I see everyone with a ham antenna on their car, Mike Oh, there’s there’s someone who’s in the ham radio because they’re very, they’re way taller than the other antenna in their aftermarket usually. So I’ve been noticing a lot It was a lot of fun to go take the test the guys were a fun bunch. Because it’s the local ham club here in Omaha, the absorbing absorbing club. So they put on the test they volunteer to put it on and another word of warning, you know, if you are getting the ham radio there is just you know, it’s you you can find pretty much anything on ham radio, so these lot of conspiracy or conspiracy theorists out there a lot of you know very either right or left wing wanting to talk about politics. And so there are some very interesting listens if you want, you know, find a find a night and just kind of listen to these guys just chat. It’s a lot of fun. But you know, if you don’t like what they’re talking about, there’s plenty of other frequencies you can tune to and listen to the people talk.

Jim Collison  [56:04] 
Andrew says someone honked at me the other day when I looked around, and sure enough, it was another hand.

Mike Wieger  [56:08] 
Oh, so Andrew, I’m guessing you have I haven’t been reading the chapter. I’m guessing you have a mobile unit in your rig as well. I think he’s I think he is in for sure. Well, maybe Andrew can be my Elmer so in ham radio. And Elmer is a person who knows who’s kind of like a wise been through the works had knows a lot about it may help the young guys kind of get into it. So Andrew might have some questions. I’ll hit you up. Yeah, injures right, though it is a it is a rule of thumb, you’re not supposed to talk about religion, politics, you cannot use any bad language. That being said, there are certain nets around where that’s just their thing. And they all know it’s their thing. And that group of people, they just, you know, they’re okay with it within themselves. But you’re right. If I especially I’m hopping on a net, or a repeater on only one. You’re not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff.

Jim Collison  [56:54] 
I’ll have to have you you should think about a title for this show that gets ham in title, like the way it’s supposed to be done. And so any work is because most of what we did here tonight. Sure. So think about do me a favor. Think about a title for the show. How would you put it for good SEO? So people will pick it up? And what would be a good title? And just throw it in the show notes for me? And at the top of the show notes? And I’ll add it in? Yeah. Well, when we, when we post the show, Mike super cool. I’m I think we’ll probably hear a lot more I think I think we’re going to there’s more people out there who do have than we realize that listen to the show. And I think you’re going to get a lot of emails or a lot of, you know, connections. What do you think? So if you want people to connect with you for ham related stuff, how do you want them to do that?

Mike Wieger  [57:42] 
A two ways, Twitter’s totally fine. So at Wieger tech, you see it in the WEGR tech, or if you actually go to the new email that I set up, which is Mike at W zero, Eg er, com, you can send an email there, and I’m checking it there. So either way, Twitter or email, email is probably the easiest. And then you know, but to be honest, in a few, a few days, whenever my license hits, I’ll be on QR Zed. And if you’re a ham person, you know what QR is that is so you can go on my QR Zed page, and I’ll have all my links to everything. And I’ll have my email out there. So just look me up on keywords. And hopefully, my license hits the database here soon. I’ll be up there.

Jim Collison  [58:20] 
Ron says he’s working a 40 meter ban last month was nice, was fine. And then Andrew, I love this. This made me smile. Home Gadget Geeks plus ham equals BBQ.

Mike Wieger  [58:28] 
And then Ron also said that he wants to get as general so we can work D star. So that’s one thing in the future, I’d love to have another because there are so many modes we didn’t we covered all analog. Everything we talked about tonight was analog, we actually we didn’t even mention another analog which is CW Morse code. But there are a million digital modes now that people operate on over the ham radio frequencies. So you’re actually sending digital messages. So it’s actually using your computer in conjunction with your radio to send out digital style messages. And people can have taught groups, it’s a much different style, very complicated, but that’s something you know ham radio HGG round two will hopefully be around more of the different modes and get into digital how do you use your computer with ham radio and how all of that interacts maybe a little CW some international Morse code. And and really the fun side as you dive into the more of the technical stuff ham radio.

Jim Collison  [59:24] 
Cool. Well, we’ll if you want to get involved with Mike on this, contact them I’m sure this will show up like like grilling and BBQ I’m sure this is going to show up on the show more than more than once. And we’ll look forward to your comments, your suggestions, your ideas. If you want to write something, Mike’s got this blog, but we’ll throw it on the average guy that TV as well. I mentioned that earlier in the show. If you’re interested in writing some blog posts, whatever you want to put something out there. Yeah, I’m welcome. I take him again, if you want to do that, again, Jim, at the average guy.tv. If you’re thinking you got something to say and you you’d like to post it Oh, the picture came back for the International Space Station. So Oh, this Yeah, this is pretty cool. This has been one of my favorite. I did a little hack this weekend where I go into the developer mode on your on your fire tablet, and set it to the developer equals Yes, or whatever it is, and then the screen always stays on. So it never, it never goes off. There’s a setting there. So I leave this app for the International Space Station open. And in some ways tracking where that thing was. And there’s a little picture on it. So it’s pretty cool. IISSD live is what it’s called,

Mike Wieger  [1:00:32] 
oh, it’s a website, not an app, or does not know it’s an app. Okay. Okay. If you are a ham radio operator, actually, I think it’s now I think it’s the first through the seventh of August, the International Space Station is actually transmitting TV over the amateur bands. And I’m not sure. Again, I’m new to all this. I don’t know how that works. But I know that right now they are they are sending out that signal. So if you have the ability to receive that TV signal on the amateur band, you can actually

Jim Collison  [1:00:59] 
pick it up. International Space Station is getting ready to fly over Australia right now. It’s so crazy to watch this sometimes it’s just I think is that’s moving at 17,500 miles an hour.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:10] 
Well, that’s what I was when I clicked on International Space Station and my tracker app, and I went to passes like how many times they’re going to pass like, well, there’s no way it’s gonna pass that many times. Really? Things cooking. Yeah, I had no idea was moving that fast. Slow scan TV. Thank you, Ron. I couldn’t think of the term slow scan TV.

Jim Collison  [1:01:28] 
Nope. Yeah. No. Super cool. Alright, I guess with that will will maybe call it an evening if you’ve got some ideas, things you want to hear us talk about. Over the next couple of weeks. We’ve got some pretty cool stuff coming up. Next week. I should probably I am pumped for next week. Yeah, next week. Aaron Lawrence comes on. She’s here. And we are going to talk about this van. I saw pictures of it she was talking about she was doing a review of something in the van. I forget what it was now. And you can see the van. And it’s like, there’s that. And so she is kind of completely converted one of these box fans into travel trailer for them. And it’s completely high tech in a lot of ways. So Aaron’s going to come on next week and and be hanging out with us in and talking about some of the technology she put in there. The week after that podcast movement I’m going to be doing down in Orlando. If you’re a listener and you’re going to attend podcast movement, I’d love to meet you there. Or if you live in Orlando, I’d love to meet you there 12 1314 1516 something like that that week. We are in Orlando or I’m in Orlando hanging out at the Rosen I think Rosen Hotel in Orlando most of the week and then the 22nd this is this could be good to Cody Wieger is going to join us talk about alcohol and tech. He’s working for a company that’s got this weird tech angle on the business and so not about getting hammered it’s going to be about the actual technology that there might be a little bit getting hammered in there but the about the technology around what the what they’re doing with this business of his in that he’s in and alcohol so should be kind of fun. Cody Wieger has done the history of alcohol on a podcast called shots of history that I have found very interesting as he lately has been talking a lot to a lot of bartenders about cocktails and it’s pretty cool pretty cool listen to I’m interested in it and in so Cody we will be here in a couple weeks to talk about that I’ve been pursuing him for a while. And he’s like I don’t really have much to say and then he changed jobs and sake I got something to say that’ll be sweet. Yeah, so Cody wheat will be coming on as well. If you want to join us live you should come out on Thursdays Thursday night 8pm Central nine Eastern. You don’t need an invite I just gave you one come out and join us. You need nothing just come to the average guy.tv slash live click on the link join us in here we got a bunch show want to thank everybody who came out tonight. get that done. Good to see you guys. It’s always great to have you in chat and always great to have you around couple reminders. Kind of before we go I have no idea actually what happened to them to my reminders. Where did they go? There they are. Okay, couple remind I do them every week. I don’t know I need I need notes for this. But I don’t know I’m still I’m still kind of done. thank our Patreon subscribers, it’s the beginning of the month. And so I always get to your gifts to the network helpful when purchasing things like SSD drives and lights and hard drives and microphones and some of those kinds of things bandwidth. We’ve been doing this new otter.ai that I’m paying for now, which is cool 10 bucks a month to get automatic transcriptions and that service just keeps getting better. And so that allows us allows me to buy those things and make them available to you if you head out to the show notes the average guy.tv slash HGG 411 I think as early as four or eight or 49 we started putting the transcripts in so you want to go out and see those breaks them down by Mike and my mean you can search for him. Super cool. They’re available out there and thanks to our Patreon subscribers join us a discord the average guy.tv slash discord on Facebook the average guy.tv slash Facebook you see the pattern? there? Okay, if you can contact me on the show Jim at the average guy.tv if you want to I’m at j Collison at Wieger tech. If you want to follow us both on Twitter Oh, I changed my Instagram handle. Do you do a lot of Instagram? Don’t? What? What’s your handle on on Instagram? Mike Wieger just Mike Wieger Yep, super great. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [1:05:28] 
I tried to get it on Twitter. And for some reason I think I had it in a while and I switch and I can’t get it back and sucks. No One No One has it but I can’t get it back.

Jim Collison  [1:05:37] 
So I I was Jake. No, I think it was Jim t Collison I hated it. Then I switched it to you know I like the real JC that’s kind of what I’ve been going by. Couldn’t get that one either. Somebody had that. So now I’m the real old JC works perfectly so you want to follow me on Instagram. I almost post nothing on Instagram. You gotta start trolling the real JC the real old on ALL THE REAL JESUS stuff. Sure. The real old JC I have a real old JC as well. And so if you want to follow us out there, you can do that as well. We mentioned Christian and Maple Grove partners if you want secure reliable high speed hosting from people that you know and you trust versus Christian Maple Grove partners.com. Mike just did it plans as little as $10 I five bucks for for email if you want to get that done as well. $15 a month and some of the best service you will ever get in the history of service. Yes. Is that Christian Johnson? Yeah, yeah, he does. He does well on that as well. And then don’t forget, you can download our app Home Gadget Geeks. com Android iPhone, get it on your devices. Just have it available just in case in an emergency like ham radio. You never know when you’re going to be somewhere and it’s going to be an emergency and you can’t it’s Thursday night and you have to listen to Home Gadget Geeks download the frickin app and have it available for you Home Gadget Geeks. com thank our Patreon subscribers who make the make that available for you. Tony Raynor, by the way has been pimping the Home Gadget Geeks shirt which I never down. I said I was going through the beginning of the year I didn’t know what it is the average guy.tv slash swag. So maybe you missed

that you know I missed it.

And he saw CEO set that up for us and those shirts are available I’ll leave it out there if you want to go pick it up. I have been sporting a long sleeve tonight I’ve been kind of getting into long sleeve it’s nice evening it’s cool down here. We’ve been thinking about maybe Home Gadget Geeks long sleeve I gotta get that done. But head out to the average guy.tv slash swag Tony thanks for your tweets he is super supportive in reverse Yeah, yeah I don’t know how he finds the time to do it all just to be honest like Holly you set those up Tony or scalar yet to be on some fantastic vacations lately that I’ve been seeing the pictures of he’s been he has been doing that as well. We got to buy this is a first week Mike we got a box of Hello Fresh and it was short of the hell of fresh part. It was What do you mean completely empty it had to have the three meals somebody just how many I mean you’ve been noticed for a year and some change change no no no so they refunded us the not I don’t think the whole thing I think they gave us a partial credit so the next month we’ll get the divided by three and you know whatever they give us some credit for it’s pretty awesome the meat was in there just the bag was gone that wasn’t there somebody I’m sure somebody just missed it you know it’s on the show they’re putting the things custom building your box for as they go along. And but it just continued to be a really cool I should have brought it down I bought a you know I’ve been roasting corn on the grill and then ID corn it I don’t know if that’s what you call it but he caught it now what do you call when you when you cut the when you cut the corn off the cob is there.

Mike Wieger  [1:08:47] 
I know taking this stuff off the Husky and that’s your I’ve already know

Jim Collison  [1:08:49] 
the Husky

gone it’s anyways, sounds good. Pampered Chef has a tool.

exactly sure that’s true.

I think we’re gonna have to turn it on. Turning in Nebraska card Mike episode Iowa. They’re like get out of here. Yeah, it’s a tool that you can just you just run it down the husk or don’t run it down the the top and it just pops all the kernels right off for you. I got that for 12 bucks from Pampered Chef I was pretty excited or worth it. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [1:09:21] 
It’s called cutting the corn off the cob.

Jim Collison  [1:09:25] 
I thought maybe there was like a d

d word associated with D something but yes cutting the corn It was kind of messy cutting the cord. You know I take it I cut it off and then it goes into a cast iron skillet add some butter and some bacon. And then you let that cook for until all the colonel separate and oh my god, dude. It is so great. You can add add whatever spices you want to it and it is so great on

Mike Wieger  [1:09:50] 
everything. Right? Is he like a bull that by itself? Yeah. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [1:09:54] 
yeah. No, yeah. Yes. That would be a great up a little steak with it. It will steak and corn. Yeah, you’re in Nebraska. For sure. We are live every Thursday. Oh, by the way, I got some new coupon codes for Hello Fresh. This is where I was going with that before I got distracted with corn on the cob. I have three new week free it’s like we’re 60 bucks. You can get your first week free health fresh no obligation. You can cancel anytime. You can delay him if you want. It really gets you get your big box. It’s free. No, no, listen, I don’t make anything off this. I’m not trying to sell it. It’s just been life changing for me. So if you’re if you’re maybe my age or younger, don’t have a lot of kids. This is where it works out really well. And you’re always struggling. Like what are we going to do for dinner? I don’t know. Let’s go out. Well, you can do so much better. Hello Fresh we had meatballs Sammy made meatballs and rice and carrots like pickled carrots was zucchini tonight

Mike Wieger  [1:10:53] 
from fresh

Jim Collison  [1:10:56] 
that was the one so that was actually the one we were missing the bag we were missing so we had all the components for it so they just made it we had the meat so we made that we made the meatballs but everything else we just pulled out of the

Mike Wieger  [1:11:08] 
recipe cards right? And then reusing those when you buy a whole binder

Jim Collison  [1:11:12] 
yes you get them online to like you don’t have to have access you could go to Hello Fresh today and get some get some recipes if you want to do that. I think they’re available I don’t think you have to have an account. I don’t Oh really? Okay. I don’t think you might have to

Mike Wieger  [1:11:24] 
ease right of having all that just show ya

Jim Collison  [1:11:27] 
know, and they’re big, they’re big. They’re big.

You know, big idiot proof.

recipes like they have six pictures and they just do this. Then do this.

Yeah Then add this.

Then do this never made a bad meal with Hello Fresh. I made plenty of bad meals never made one that way and so whether it’s them or Blue Apron or whatever, right. There’s another meal service. Sarah mentioned it the other night where you get the meals they’re ready. You don’t even have to you just popping in the microwave and they’re kind of ready fresh. I forget what it is freshly.

That sound

Does that sound right freshly haven’t heard of freshly we’ve been we’ve been It was another one of these services. We’re going to try it when Sammy goes back to school. We’re going to try it for a week. And and just kind of see it’s been good you know it’s not the cheapest but it’s not the most expensive and that keeps us eating well. And feeling good about it. That’s been that’s been kind of the key. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern out here at the average guy.tv slash live Aaron Lawrence next week. You’re not gonna want to miss it. So come out and join us live. We’ll see you next week. If you’re listening in the if you’re in the live. Thank you for listening live ahead wagers. Stay around with that will say goodbye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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